A known vehicle seat disclosed in JP2002-345593A includes a lower rail, an upper rail and a lower arm. Specifically, the lower rail is fixed on the vehicle floor, the upper rail is supported by the lower rail so as to be slidable in a front-rear direction of the vehicle interior V, and the lower arm is fixed to the upper rail so as to support a seating surface of a seat cushion S.
Further, as shown in FIG. 6, the vehicle seat includes a supporting device for supporting a passenger to get in/out of a vehicle, in which a supporting cover 60′ is provided to the vehicle seat at the seating surface 70′ of the seat cushion S on the side of the door. In this configuration, a passenger gets in/out of the vehicle with putting his/her hand on the supporting cover in order to ease the getting on/off operation. The known supporting device has a structure where a part of the lower arm 30′ extends along an under surface of the supporting cover so as to form a bracket portion 50′ as shown in FIG. 6 in order to support the supporting cover from underneath thereof. In other words, the bracket portion supports pressure applied by the passenger who put on his/her hand on the supporting cover.
When excessive pressure applied to the supporting cover, for example, when a heavy object falls on the supporting cover, the bracket portion of the lower arm may deform or break. In such case, because the lower arm is integrally formed with bracket portion, even when only the bracket portion is broken, the entire lower arm needs to be replaced, as a result, a repairing cost becomes high.
Further, according to the known supporting device, because the lower arm is formed integrally with the bracket portion, such lower arm cannot be used for a vehicle not having the supporting cover. Thus, a cost for manufacturing the vehicle seat having a supporting device becomes high.
A need thus exists to reduce a cost and a repairing cost of a vehicle seat having a supporting device, the supporting device supporting a passenger to get in/out of a vehicle.